New Ladder To Success

With 14 remaining applicants, both teams met Trump, Ivanka and George for this new challenge. Donald Trump stated U.S. consumers spend $6 billion on cereal products. The contestants were then joined by two executives from Post cereals, Daryl Brewster and Sarita Nayyar, who explained this week’s contest. Each team was to create a billboard for Post’s new cereal, Grape Nuts Trail Mix.

TEAM SYNERGY:  Allie, Sean, Tammy (project manager), Pepi, Andrea, Roxanne, Brent, Stacy and Michael.

TEAM GOLD RUSH: Tarek, Dan, Bryce, Charmaine (project manager), Leslie, Theresa, Lee, Summer and Lenny.

THE ASSIGNMENT: to design billboards (20'x15' size) launching the new face of Post Grape Nuts Trail Mix Crunch Cereal. The winning team would be determined by Post executives who judge the teams based on originality, brand image and overall campaigns.

THE WINNING TEAM:   Gold Rush

FIRED CANDIDATE: Brent

LESSON LEARNED:

1)   Don’t let a poor execution ruin a great idea!

“An idea can be as flawless as can be, but its execution will always be full of mistakes.” - Brent Scowcroft Unlike like a blueprint, an idea is elusive and it is subjected to the interpretations of many. The experience of developing an idea into a successful reality can be as dissatisfying and frustrating as a bowl of soggy cereal.

Allie, from Synergy, came up with the idea, “The next generation of Post Grape Nuts.” It was inspired by her childhood memory of her father eating Grape Nuts cereal. The concept centered on the image of Grape Nuts being passed from one generation to the next, from father to daughter, and was greatly received by her team. They decided to show a fatherly figure passing a bowl of cereal to his daughter to illustrate Trail Mix Crunch is a new cereal for a new generation.

Compared to Gold Rush’s “It’s that good”, Synergy’s idea was clearly better. So why did Synergy lose this task? The reason - poor execution. Only the idea was better, not the reality. The multigenerational theme was distorted by a lack of age difference between the father and the daughter models. Donald Trump expressed that he felt the young woman looked like the older guy’s girlfriend, not his daughter. The father-daughter presentation did not seem believable. Which brings us to the next lesson…

  2)  Less is more

There is a marketing term called “drive-by marketing”, and the basis of this campaign is to keep the message bold and simple—bold enough to grab the attention of passing motorists, and simple enough for them to grasp it on the fly.

The clever message of Synergy’s The Next Generation of Post Grape Nuts” was cluttered with too many words and graphics. The tag line: “Grape Nuts Trail Mix, The Next Generation” was too long to grasp from a billboard. Finally, the tag line, “A cereal for everybody,” overpowered the Post logo. The Post executives commented Synergy’s campaign was “too complex … hard to know where to look, what to take away” from the billboard. “If you’re in a traffic jam, you’re never going to be able to read it.”

 3)  Cool under fire

When a group of “over-achievers” get together and everyone is determined to outdo each other, chaos is inevitable. Gold Rush’s project manager, Charmaine, took the lead as she managed to unite the team, despite adversity and diversity. “She solicited her team’s ideas without allowing them to go off on tangents and kept them focused on an important task—a simple but effective marketing message. Once an acceptable message was agreed upon, she never allowed her team to second guess themselves (even when Bryce began to doubt his own idea) and allowed nothing to distract the group from executing it effectively. Cool, calm, and collected, Charmaine showed the steady hand and quiet courage of a born leader.” (Blackenterprise.com).

So remember to stay cool.

Trump's Lesson of the Week: “Keep It Simple, Stupid”

Smart people tend to make things complicated. Trump suggested keeping things simple.

Related links:    The Apprentice on NBC, The Apprentice on SirLinksalot.net, and The Apprentice Rules